Sudan’s armed forces on Monday described the United Nations resolution on Darfur as ”a declaration of war” and warned that any foreign intervention in the region would be fought ”on land, sea and air”.
The armed forces spokesperson, General Muhammad Bashir Suleiman, raised tensions by speaking of a jihad against the ”enemies of Sudan”.
”The security council resolution about the Darfur issue is a declaration of war on Sudan and its people,” he told the official al-Anbaa newspaper.
”The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur,” he said, referring to a peace deal which has ended the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan.
The UN resolution on Darfur, which was passed on Friday, gave the Sudanese government 30 days to disarm the predominantly Arab Janjaweed militias whose campaign of murder, rape and arson has driven more than a million people from their homes.
Tony Blair is looking at options for sending British troops to Sudan, to support the relief effort or to help protect refugee camps from militia attacks.
The Sudanese government is critical of the resolution, and has said it prefers to stick to a deal it signed with the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, last month, which allows Sudan 90 days to disarm the Janjaweed.
General Suleiman claimed on Monday that the 30-day deadline in the UN resolution was ”a preparatory period” for war against Sudan, which he said was ”being targeted by foreign powers”.
He called on the Sudanese media to prepare the country for ”an unconventional warfare”. ”We will not welcome the Americans with flowers or white flags,” the general said.
The general was also critical of the west’s use of the word Janjaweed, which he described as part of a psychological war against Sudan.
Janjaweed is a word traditionally used in Darfur to refer to criminals, although the victims of militia attacks have adopted it to refer to the government-backed paramilitary groups which drove them from their villages.
This double meaning has given rise to confusion. After western leaders called for the Janjaweed to be disarmed, Sudanese officials responded by rounding up bandits and putting their militia units into army or police uniforms.
Sudan’s government, whose relations with the US and Britain reached their nadir in 1998 when President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Khartoum, is deeply suspicious of western intentions.
It claims that the crisis in Darfur has been exaggerated by the western media to embarrass an Arab government.
Sudan’s foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, recently claimed the pressure put on his country ”closely resembles the increased pressure that was put on Iraq” in the run-up to war. At the weekend, he hinted that the UN resolution had been passed because of the pending US elections.
There are an estimated 1,2-million internal refugees in Darfur and 120 000 who have crossed the border into Chad. Every day, between 30 and 100 new refugees arrive on the Chad border. The displaced families are short of food.
Some aid worker sources estimate that the UN’s food distributions cover between a third and half of what is needed. – Guardian Unlimited Â